Boytacean

A Game Boy emulator that is written in Rust 🦀.

This emulator has been written for educational purposes and shouldn't be taken too seriously. But yeahh it plays most Game Boy games, which is cool... 🕹️

Features

• Game Boy (DMG) and Game Boy Color (CGB) emulation
• Simple navigable source-code
• Web, SDL and Libretro front-ends
• Audio, with a pretty accurate APU
• Optional high-pass audio filter (Preserve, Accurate or Disabled)
• Serial Data Transfer (Link Cable) support
• Game Boy Printer emulation
• Support for multiple MBCs: MBC1, MBC2, MBC3, and MBC5
• Save state support using the BESS Specification for cross-compatibility with other emulators
• Cheat support using Game Genie and GameShark codes
• Variable CPU clock speed
• Accurate PPU - passes dmg-acid2 and cgb-acid2 tests

For the Web front-end...

• Mobile first experience
• Transparent RAM saving using Web Storage API
• GamePad support using Web Gamepad API
• Unobstructive and effective on-screen GamePad
• Rumble emulation and haptic feedback
• Cool bespoke display palettes built by TheWolfBunny64.
• Fullscreen browser mode
• Game playlists loaded from a remote JSON file - see Playlists
• Debug mode - VRAM and registers

What's still missing...

• Low-level cycle accurate system emulation
• Game Boy Camera emulation
• NetPlay gaming support

Deployments

Provider	Stable	URL
Cloudflare	True	boytacean.joao.me
Cloudflare	True	boytacean.pages.dev
Cloudflare	True	prod.boytacean.pages.dev
Cloudflare	True	stable.boytacean.pages.dev
Cloudflare	False	master.boytacean.pages.dev

Build

Library

cargo build

Python Library

pip install .

or

python setup.py install

WASM for Node.js

cargo install wasm-pack
wasm-pack build --release --target=nodejs -- --features wasm

WASM for Web

cargo install wasm-pack
wasm-pack build --release --target=web --out-dir=frontends/web/lib -- --features wasm
cd frontends/web
npm install && npm run build
cd dist && python3 -m http.server

Utilities

BOSC Decompressor

The BOSC decompressor is a simple utility that decompresses BOSC files to BOS format.

cargo run --release --bin bosc-decompress -- <input_file> <output_file>

Web front-end

The Web front-end makes use of EmuKit which is a UI toolkit that provides the required infrastructure for the creation of interfaces for emulation in a Web context.

Configuration

You can use some GET parameters to control the initial behavior of the emulator.

Parameter	Type	Description
rom_url	String	The URL from which the initial ROM is going to be loaded, should support CORS.
url	String	The same as rom_url.
fullscreen	Boolean	If the emulator should start in fullscreen mode.
fs	Boolean	The same as fullscreen.
debug	Boolean	If the "debugger" should start visible and information shown in verbose mode.
verbose	Boolean	If information should be shown in verbose mode.
keyboard	Boolean	If the on-screen keyboard should start visible.
palette	String	The name of the palette to be set at startup( eg: christmas, hogwards, mariobros, etc.).
playlist_url	String	The URL of a JSON playlist file containing a list of ROMs to be loaded, should support CORS.
playlist	String	The same as playlist_url.

Playlists

You can load a collection of ROMs through a JSON playlist using the playlist_url parameter. See Playlists for the file format, available fields, and examples.

Palettes

The palettes offered in the web version were provided by TheWolfBunny64.

Inspiration

To get some information about the resources that inspired me through the emulation creation journey check Inspiration.

Contributing

Love Gameboy emulation? Want to contribute to Boytacean? That's awesome! Your contributions are what make the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create.

To get started, please take a look at our Contributing Guidelines. Whether you're fixing bugs, adding new features, or helping with documentation, every contribution is valuable and greatly appreciated!

Don't hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. Join us in making Boytacean the best Gameboy emulator out there!

License

Boytacean is currently licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0.

Build Automation